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What were the great sci-fi icons during the
80s? I can come up with Knight Rider and Robocop! Toei must have thought the same, so why not create a tokusatsu TV series around a cyborg human and a Pontiac Trans Am? So behold Mobile Sheriff Jiban:
Just like in Robocop a cop gets killed and is brought back to life. The little girl giving him all the shiney stuff is his little sister who is the only person who really knows who he is. One little problem: she wears a Bomb Ring which will detonate if he comes too close, so he can’t approach her anymore…

Apparently someone without car knowledge translated the Japanese wikipedia page to the English page and thinks the car is a Mazda RX7 (FC-2S). If you search on Jiban in English all results will state the same. It doesn’t take much to recognize it as a Pontiac Trans Am instead.

If you read the Japanese wikipedia page it is clearly described as a left hand drive third generation Trans Am. I know, I know: never trust Wikipedia… 😉

Now this is hilarious: during the peak of tokusatsu popularity National (Panasonic) was selling this vacuum cleaner in 1971 with an Ultraman spoof commercial:
The Ultra woman has long vacuum cleaner like arm and is called here Hayabusa. The name is a pun on Ultraman (his real name was Shin Hayata) and literally means “peregrine falcon” which is the fastest falcon in the world. Looking at the commercial I’d say she is definitely the fastest vacuum cleaner in the world!

This Kamen Rider parody called Kamen Norida is so hilarious: he rides a 50cc moped, he dresses up like a monkey, saves plants and trees from dehydration and he fights giant birds, like this Giant duck, by dancing silly and doing flying kicks:

Yes, the duck appears to be joining some nazi lookalike and he, apparently, is very evil! As you all know from other tokusatsu: all eye-patched people are evil. 😉

But of course Norida will kick (actually swing) the Duck’s butt. And of course the duck will play nasty tricks like turning Noridas friends into ducklings! WTF!? 😀
Of course justice will prevail and the giant Duck will be roast. That’s how about every episode goes…

I really tried to find out what a Norida is, but I failed on finding the meaning of the word… I did find a very humorous passage on the Japanese Kamen Norida wikipedia entry describing it:People modify the “Norida” also will be remodeled, Hayato character stone (which is converted into a man’s answering machine after) is rescued by escape before remodeling the brain of justice “mask Norida “as determined to fight for world peace
So Norida it actually means the feeling of justice?
No it does not: I did find out on a Brazilian forum that it actually is a wordplay on the name of the actor (Noritake Kinashi).

Update: I also found a Youtube video describing a bit more about this series. Apparently the group called Tunnels consists out of Takaaki Ishibashi (石橋 貴明 ) and Noritake Kinashi (木梨 憲武 ) and were both from Tokyo. They did the parody on Kamen Rider without the permission of Toei. It doesn’t state if Toei actually tried to stop them or not.

Time to feed you some more tokusatsu! An 8 minutes Kamen Rider compilation with the heroic Kamen Rider song in the background!
I think I got enough of the rubber suits, big explosions, bad kung fu, bosozoku wannabes and sung heroic poems for the next three months! 😉

This tokusatsu scene by Kamen Rider is hilarious:
Some Pharaoh dude driving a Prince Gloria A30 sedan is fighting Kamen Rider with fire. Especially the finale is brilliant: after a small flying kick he just disappears in thin air! 😀